Sign in

Sign in to confirm

9GAG - Official 9GAG app - Laugh Out Loud!

Loie Favre (translation)2013-04-15T09:58:15ZApr 15, 2013

Loie Favre
Loie Favre found her way to her present passion for Android and smartphone technology after experiencing an epiphany when she held her Galaxy Note 2. From that point onwards, you can find her with her nose buried in countless Android apps and different smartphone models, and thanking her lucky stars that she gets to work at something she loves.

0

''Laugh more!'': this is the motto that one website has adopted over the past few years. It pertains to the well-known platform 9GAG. After a relatively long waiting time, the app from this website, 9GAG - Official 9GAG app, which was exclusively for iPhone, is now available for Android too!

Whether this app lives up to the humor of the website will be exposed in today's app test review.

4★★★★☆

Rating

Features & Use

Since the pictures that are usually uploaded onto 9GAG - Official 9GAG app are actually those from other 9GAG users, the screenshots at the moment are from the official website. As soon as we receive consent, then changes will be made and new screenshots will be uploaded.

Before we get going on the app, I would first like to mention something about the website. 9GAG has been around for quite some time, since 2008. For a long time, it's been the insider's tip for all kinds of people, who were searching for a reason to smile. Defining 9GAG is yet again something that's difficult to do. I think the website is best described as a smorgasbord of oddities. The website displays pictures from everyday life or self-drawn comics. On 9GAG, you'll be able to find a very diverse content and everything is very humorous. You'll get either a chuckle out of a funny pictures or feel happy inside because a post reminds you of something funny from your childhood, for example. This website simply conveys joy to its viewers.

That being said, the application is under pressure to live up to high expectations. Because of the incredibly long wait for an app that was exclusively for iPhones, the developers must have put a lot of effort into it to not create some cheap copy of the iPhone version or asome slightly improved look. Instead, I expect a work of art that has earned the name of mobile app. Well in this case, the developers' efforts for 9GAG paid off, since the official app turned out really great.

Even though it was quite annoying that I had to keep on selecting ''No. Thanks!'' to repeated requests to rate the app, I will look past this point when rating the app. I directed my attention to the functional aspects of the content presentation. Once you start up the app, you'll land directly on the feed, just like on the website. The home page is made up of an endless list of posts to discover.

Under each one of the posts, you'll be able to like or not like. Only the most popular 9GAG posts can be found in the ''Hot'' category. Each posts goes through many stages. The first one is the ''Voting Page''. Here, 9GAG users can rate each post. This worked really well within the app and this is a particularly important portion for intense 9GAG users. Commenting on posts also worked impeccably. Here, when a post has reached a certain spot in the hierarchy of popularity, they're then filtered and showcased in the ''trending'' category. While keeping on track with this pyramid scheme, the highlights will be placed under hot topics and can then be viewed by millions of users.

Reading these posts and interacting around them is the main purpose of the application and they did a really good job. One of 9GAG's pillars on the other hand was completely skipped over: uploading your own pictures. The reasons remain unclear why sharing pictures from your mobile device was not included. So many things happen every day and sharing them from your mobile device would make for more than 2000 posts. Repeating jokes: this is something that I really need to criticize.

Individual posts can be shared with the world using your Android device and you can also save pictures.

Bottom Line

9GAG - Official 9GAG app was successful in many different ways. Integrating comments and viewing and rating posts worked really well. All in all, the app got a lot pros when comparing it to the website version. But something that really bothers me is the fact that you can't upload your own pictures. You simply remain a viewer and not a 100% active participant.

If the developers would integrate this function, then I would recommend this app to all who have a funny bone and who would appreciate funny, sometimes even twisted, humor. On the other hand, there's also Reddit and 4Chan, though the first one's controls are more contorted and the second is a whole separate issue.

Screen & Controls

As mentioned above, I already formulated my high expectations for the 9GAG - Official 9GAG app. Because the application took so long to come out, the developers should have created something more than just an iOS port. At the end of the day, they succeeded in this mission and the app's appearance looks really good completely independent of the website's content.

Though the graphics aren't extraordinary, they work consistently on a higher level. You sort of get the impression that it copied a thing or two from other apps, whether it's the comfortable controls on the side menu (swipe bar like Spotify) on the presentation of the posts in one field (like Facebook).

The landscape mode on the other hand didn't turn out as great, since most of the pictures (even in a 4.7 inch device) surpass the height of the screen, which doesn't allow for comfortable viewing.

Speed & Stability

9GAG - Official 9GAG app didn't do too well in this category. This is because it repeatedly crashed while being tested, both on the HTC One X and the Nexus 4.